There can be nothing worse than to login to Blogger one day and find you blogger blog gone, corrupted or deleted forever due to any unforseen error. Back up is very important. Here are a few simple ways to keep your Blogger blog safe and backed up….

Back up Blogger Posts

• Backup Your Posts - Bloggers Blogsend allows each of my blog posts to be automatically sent to my email address. So I have a back up of all my posts as individual emails. You can further create folders in your email account (as in Yahoo Mail) or apply labels (in Gmail), and create filters such that such emails can be collected in one place.
• Back up your entire blogger blog - Bloggers provides detailed instructions to create a single file with all your posts which you may publish and then copy to your own computer for use as desired. Remember to save a copy of your existing template in a file on your computer as you will need to have it at hand after this process is completed. This is good for a one time backup, but is cumbersome to do if you back up very frequently. Also you might mess up some setting and disbale your blog is not done right.
• Try third party back up tools - like the HTTrack Web site copier for Windows users and Webgrabber for Mac users. Each of these applications will create a fully working, interlinked local copy of your blog for browsing offline and easily allow you to back up. Remember it will take considerable time and internet bandwidth if you have a huge blog.

Back up Blog Template

• Back up the template whenever you change it. Just copy and paste the entire template code into any simple text editor like Notepad or Wordpad and save file with name like ‘myblog-date.txt’. After a while you will have a series of such files organized by date. If for some reason your blog goes away, just copy and paste the teplate back into Blogger and republish.
• If you have lost your template partly or fully - learn how to restore your blog template code and then back it up.

Back Up Blog Comments

• Blogger has an option to send you an email when someone leaves a comment on your blog. This is located in Setting > Comments option in Blogger. This enables you to collect all your comments as individual emails, much like the blogsend posts emails mentioned above. Then you can file them all together as labels or in a email folder.
• If you moderate comments, you can get all your comments as emails pending your approval. This email address can again be entered in Setting > Comments. If you do not want to save rejected comments as emails and recieve only published comments - then you can keep the comment moderation email address blank, while filling up the Comment Notification Address.
• If you use Haloscan Comments instead, then anyway your Blogger comments are off and Haloscan is keeping track of backing up your comments. I am using Blogger comments featured now with comment moderation, word verification captchas to combat comment spam.

Make blog back ups a habit and you will remember this post when it saves your blog on a bad day!

Google Gadgets are mini tools that offer cool and dynamic content that can be placed on any page on the web. Though you can Google gadgets to your iGoogle page, Google Desktop, Blogger, and Page Creator, its even cooler to show off Google gadgets on your own site. There are some very cool gadgets out there, and here are some of my top picks in random order.

10 Best Google Gadgets

1. Countdown - Counts down to a user specified date. Customize it to countdown to any blog event, contest closing date, poll closing date, blog anniversary etc. Here is another one with text only display. Keep reminding your visitors and never miss a deadline.

2. Google Translate My Page - Gives you a quick dropdown menu to allow non-english readers to select their native language and translate the page using Google translation services. You can also get more gadgets with language flags. This is a good way to make your blog multilingual and get read by a wide international audience.

3. Digg 2.0 - Discover the best news, images and videos as voted on by the Digg community. You can customize your Digg gadget by topic, and view more story information, such as comments and a friend’s activity feed. Share interesting content rocking the web right now. You can also add Google News or BBC News.

4. Slim RSS Reader - Lets you add a custom RSS feed to display on your blog. Enter the RSS feed, number of items, title and you are done. Customize more with Simple rss reader or support multiple feeds with CustomRSS. Display feeds from your favorite blogs or topical categories in your sidebar.

5. YouTube Gadget - Display the top YouTube videos on your site, and let visitors browse around the Youtube site as well as play the videos without leaving your site. If sharing videos is your style, you need this now. Also try Google Videos.

6. Google talk - Everyone has a google account mostly via gmail and if your visitors are logged in, this gadgets lets them see your contacts online right now and send them instant messages. You can publicize your gtalk id and chat with your readers.

7. Photo of the Minute - Grabs a new latest photo from Flickr. Remove the photo info to optimize the size better. There are lots of gadgets that can rotate an interesting photo, graffiti, captions or cartoons. Try the National Geographic daily photo, Photos from Flickr etc.

8. Google Calendar - If you mark your blogging events on a Google calendar and share your public calendar, then why not add it to your blog and publicize the events you track. Grab this official widget and never miss a event.

9. Dilbert widget - Dilbert cartoon strip is a daily read that will bring a smile on your visitors face. Grab the official widget, resize it and load the daily Dilbert color comic strips and ranking. Or opt for a random Dilbert strip.

10. Date & Time - Some people like to place a widget displaying the date, time and calendar. Add a clock to your page. Click edit to change it to the color of your choice. Narrow the width to remove the calendar.

How to add a Google Gadgets?

Select the gadget you like, click the “Add to your webpage” button, edit the Display settings, Click to “Preview changes” and the click “Get the code” button to generate the HTML. Copy and paste the HTML into your webpage’s source code and behold and surprise your visitors. Remember that most gadgets can be easily resized by dragging the window from the bottom right corner, before you decide the final size.

Got more time? here are all the Google Gadgets For Your Webpage. Let me know of other gadgets that deserve to be listed here and I will add them.

FIRST, there were two-minute noodles. Then there were 30-minute pizzas. And now you can file your tax returns, online, in 20 minutes! And here’s the icing on the cake: the government has done away with that long list of documents you had to submit, earlier.

Should I go the online way?
Chartered accountant Sandeep Shanbhag offers this tip: if your only income source is your salary, then filing returns online, is easy and cheap. But if you have multiple sources of income, multiple bank accounts, investments that your parents made in your name, investment income that you have no clue about, you will need professional help.

The cost factor
A chartered accountant charges you between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,500, depending on your income sources and the documentation required. The fees charged by tax-filing portals range between Rs 181 and Rs 750.
How to file your tax returns online
Step 1: Visit any of the e-tax filing portals and register yourself. The popular ones are:

• taxshax.com
• myitreturn.com
• taxsmile.com

  Compare all three. You can also visit the Government’s web site and file your returns.

Step 2: Enter your details.
The portal takes you through a simple process where you need to share your salary income, rental income, interest and dividends, investments, et al. Keep the following documents ready, so that you have easy access too the details.

Form 16: It has the details of tax deducted from your income by your employer on your behalf. You will get this form 16 from your employer, if you work in a company.

• TDS (tax deducted at source) certificates: It has the details of the tax deducted by your clients (made on your behalf) before making your payment. Get these from your clients if you are an entrepreneur.
• Bank statements: You will need to find out the interest amounts credited every quarter on your savings account. You will find this in your bank statement.
• Statement of interest paid on your house loan: Get this from your bank.
• Details about your income from house property: You will have to enter this on the basis of the home rental agreement and rent receipts issued.
• Statement specifying the transactions made via broker for shares: Get this from your demat account or broker contract notes.

Keep the following details handy: bank account number, branch, MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) code. The MICR code is a 9-digit code, which follows your cheque number at the bottom of the cheque. Submit this code if a refund is due, so that the refund amount is directly credited to your account.

Step 3: Once you enter the details, the system will calculate the tax-payable amount.
In case you have to pay tax in addition to the TDS, deposit a cheque for that amount in any bank or make an online payment on the income tax web site.
Step 4: Pay online.
The portal generates the tax return form, automatically. Pay online or visit the nearest branch and complete the process.
Online payment can be made using your credit card, debit card, cheque book, demand draft or Internet banking. The fee ranges from Rs 180 to Rs 750, depending on the portal you choose and the complexity of your return.

Step 5: Get an acknowledgment.
The portal sends your details to the tax authorities, who will send you an acknowledgment within 20 minutes to 24 hours.
All that remains is for you to sign the form. Attach a digital signature* while submitting your form, online . Or you could take a printout of the acknowledgment and sign it, manually.
Submit this to the tax authorities or at the portal’s office (who will submit it on your behalf).

The downside
The tax-payable amount is based on the details entered by you. If your details are incorrect, you will end up filing incorrect returns. So, accuracy is a must!

Disclaimer: While efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided in the content, the website or the author shall not be held responsible for any loss caused to any person whatsoever who accesses or uses or is supplied with the content (consisting of articles and information).

So you have decide to create your first blog on Blogger. It has a simple and fine interface that takes care of many things for you. This is my suggestion to you for your first free essential must haves for your blog.

1. Feedburner - It generates an smart feed compatible with all feed readers for free like my feed. It allows you to put easy subscribe buttons for XML, Add to yahoo, Add to Newsgator, Add to MSN etc. Read about how their single feed policy can benefit you.

It can give you a cool feed count chicklet button to show how many readers are using your feed to read your blog. It also gives you a headline animator which you can attach to your blog to display the recent 5 posts in a nice animated fashion. You can get an authentic Creative Common license, get a browser friendly RSS feed, Splice photos and links and more…

2. Haloscan - Trackback is an essential component of blogging these days. Unfortunately Blogger does not have trackback. Haloscan provides you with a seamless way to integrate free trackback in your blog by adding a small code. You can also integrate their comments component if you like to replace the Blogger comments. Read about Haloscan or Blogger comments.

The benefits are that you can edit Haloscan comments, and open them in a pop up and keep them separate from your post (Blogger allows you to only delete comments and not edit them, also on the post page all comments will show whether you like it or not).

The main disadvantage is it will not email you these comments (like Blogger) for free and it is difficult to track where these comments were made. Another major benefit is that it allows you to send pings and trackback to other sites when you mention about them in your posts.

3. Imageshack - Dont you want to fill your blog with images without hassles of registration. Imageshack provides an excellent interface to take care of your free image hosting needs. Maybe it is this the fastest way to host an image on the web. Allows lots of image format, hotlinking, transloading from other sites. Its a good idea to register to keep track of all your images in one place. It is much convenient than the proposed Hello and Picassa options…

Update: Blogger enabled hosting of images on its own webspace making it easier to host images in your posts. But you cannot manage or edit / delete your blogger images in any way

4. Technorati - Create and add a technorati profile. It allows you to claim your blog in this huge blogosphere. It allows you to put an excellent technorati search on your blog. The best part is that whenever someone mentions or links to any page of your blog, technorati knows and a search for your blog on technorati shows exactly how many sites link to which pages of your blog and when they were added with a small description. See why you need a technorati account.

5 - Sitemeter - Just takes 5 minutes to get a free tracker which gives you realtime site traffic statistics to check the quantity and quality of your site traffic with detailed referrer and geographic data. I have checked out several other tracking sites, but this one seems the best. Although you need to keep a counter visible (as a logo, visitor counter) and the statistics can be made private too.

StatCounter gives much more detailed statistics and the counter is totally invisible and free totally till you start getting large traffic, when you need to pay. But the disadvantage is that both of these track the last 100 visitors only, while another free service Extreme Tracking tracks them all… but you statistics cannot be made private. More options I like are Google Analytics for deep traffic statistical analysis and it is hidden too.

6. Feedblitz - It quickly allows your blog visitors to subscribe by email to your new posts. They just have to enter their email. You decide which page opens after they press Subscribe. A quick confirmatory email to them and they get 1 email daily with all your new posts. You can decide if you want to send the full post or short posts with defined number of characters. Very good to keep your subscribers informed of new posts. It allows them to unsubscribe easily also. Example for our blog.

7. My Blog Log - Tracks outgoing links to let you know where your traffic is going. The free limited version data is not in much detail, yet provides a good idea. You can also add a Top 5 Our Links module to your web site. Now they have a MyBlogLog community to get some extra site traffic too.

8 AudioBlogger- Audioblogger allows free unlimited audio posts from any phone to your Blogger blog. You call the number (Currently a US phone number), record a post, then your blog is updated with an audioblogger icon and a link to your recorded audio.

9. w.bloggar - It is a Post and Template editor, with several features and resources that the browser based blog editors do not offer. It enables users to have only one interface to several accounts hosted on several different sites, using different publishing systems. Helps to manage multiple blogs on Blogger very effectively.

10 Blogger Mobile - opens a new concept of Moblogging i.e. blogging by your mobile phone. When you send text or photos from your mobile device to go@blogger.com they’re automatically posted to your new blog page.

11. Blogexplosion - helps you get confirmed traffic to your blog. The principle is simple, you visit other peoples blogs and they visit yours. For every 2 blogs you visit, one visitor comes to you. This is very good if you are new blogger and have hardly any traffic. Definitely try the Rent a Blog advertising swap service.

12. Pingoat - Pinging lets dozens of blogging services know you’ve updated your site and increases traffic to your blog. Just enter your blog name and blog home page, check the blogging services you want to ping, just click ‘Submit Pings’ and in one click it pings all of them. Pingoat offers a wide variety of such services and is fast too. See many more one click pinging services.

13. Creative Commons - It offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists. They have built upon the “all rights reserved” of traditional copyright to create a voluntary “some rights reserved” copyright. They are nonprofit and all tools are free and useful to highlight the way in which you want others to use you content.

14. Google Adsense and Search - When you take all effort to write for a blog, why not optimize it to make some money. Let users search for good posts in your blog. And now it even helps to monetize you feeds.

This is periodically updated. Happy Bloggering!